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| Wednesday Jun 22, 2022 | |
| At the beginning of spring, we at EnergyGPS revamped our nuclear outage forecast line to better reflect upcoming nuclear outages during refueling season. Refueling season usually happens during spring and fall when loads and temperatures are mild. The goal is to do maintenance during a time when the grid can handle losing out on the baseload nuclear energy. To create a better forecast, we looked at historical patterns to identify each plant’s 18 or 24 month cycle. Then we calculated the average amount of time that plant is 100% offline and mapped out when this year’s refueling would happen. The resulting forecast is shown below in the dotted line of figure 1. Solid lines represent the sum of nuclear outages across the country in MW from 2017 to 2022 where the dark black line ... » read more | |
| Tuesday Jun 21, 2022 | |
| Over the past two weeks there has been a large shift in sentiment for the NYMEX Henry Henry Hub natural gas futures. It was not supposed to go this way. Expectations were for higher prices through the summer as power burns and LNG exports brought about a convergence between North American and global natural gas values. But it has not gone that way due to a number of changes in the balancing. Now the gas pricing is heading into the peak of summer electric demand $2.50 lower than where it was just weeks ago eroding all of the price gains that were made since the beginning of May. Figure 1 | NYMEX Continuous Contract for 2021-2022 It would be easy for the market to point to all of the price change as a result of the loss of the Freeport LNG terminal through the end of the year. » read more | |
| Monday Jun 20, 2022 | |
| If you watched the National Basketball Association’s (NBA) Finals and were a Golden State Warriors fan you were jumping out of your seat and high fiving the friends who shared the same joy as they beat the Boston Celtics this past Thursday night. The SoCal Gas and California System Operator (CAISO) were not singing the same tune as the Warrior fan base since that time as the former’s storage system delivered their high five in the way of notices stating that the system had a high inventory situation that needed to be dealt with both on a day-ahead and intra-day basis. The latter was working off the premise of lower power demand, plenty of transmission flows and a solar fleet that would be enjoying the sunny skies that Mother Nature presented over the weekend. ... » read more | |
| Friday Jun 17, 2022 | |
| by Tim Belden In the words of Kurtis Blow: “Basketball is my favorite sport I like the way they dribble up and down the court Just like I'm the King on the microphone so is Dr. J and Moses Malone I like Slam dunks take me to the hoop My favorite play is the alley oop I like the pick-and-roll, I like the give-and-go Cause it's Basketball, uh, Mister Kurtis Blow” https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=basketball+lyrics+by+kurtis+blow I have a love hate relationship with the Golden State Warriors. Let’s get the “hate” part out of the way first – their fans. Many Warriors fans are a horrible mix of Laker fans and Duke fans. Super annoying. Smug. If you grew up or live in any type of normal place, these folks make your skin crawl. But ... » read more | |
| Thursday Jun 16, 2022 | |
| In recent years since wind and solar generation has become a significant portion of the supply stack in certain regions of the US, the early spring or “shoulder months” has been the period when renewable curtailments have been most prevalent. In the past, the month of May has been characterized by a distinct “leveling off” of curtailments as the weather warmed up and demand rose, after which over the course of the summer it was rare to see renewables facing oversupply issues. In our latest Newsletter Renewable Monthly article, “May 2022 – Spring Curtailments Not Slowing”, we take a look at conditions relevant to renewable energy in different US markets, including several where curtailments are prevalent. This spring in each ... » read more | |
| Wednesday Jun 15, 2022 | |
| Last year the Pacific Northwest was dealing with a heat dome that was setting record highs throughout the region while this year has seen just the opposite as we are in the middle of June and it is still quite chilly for this time of year in the early morning. When you throw in the simple fact that the current regional water year has had the bookend atmospheric river systems move through, it could not be more opposite in nature when it comes to the overall supply/demand landscape. Figure 1 | The Pacific Northwest Bookend Weather The impact tied to the weather in the Pacific Northwest could not be any more opposite as the extreme heat tilted the Mid-C balancing act to higher prices as local utilities saw their power demand skyrocket to a point that the local transmission and ... » read more | |
| Tuesday Jun 14, 2022 | |
| The natural gas industry was spun on its head last week when Freeport LNG, the 1.9 BCF per day LNG liquefaction facility, suffered a fire neat the onsite storage tanks. Immediately the plant was shut down and guidance for an outage lasting at least three weeks was issued by Freeport. But there is every indication that the plant could be out longer than company guidance as the US Department of Transportation, Pipelines and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) is now onsite looking into the cause of the explosion. The PHMSA is chartered with overseeing the safe operation of the natural gas infrastructure across the Lower 48 and they take their mission very seriously. In the aftermath of Texas Eastern and ElPaso Pipeline ruptures over the past several years it is noted that they ... » read more | |
| Monday Jun 13, 2022 | |
| If you are a person who needed a weekend to not leave the house and just get caught up on their sleep or binge watch their favor HBO, Netflix or Prime series; the Pacific Northwest was the place for you as the atmospheric river system placed plenty of precipitation over the region. The rainfall was so impressive at times the sloped driveway was like a running stream and the gutters were overflowing with nothing clogging it but the volume of water coming off the roof. Figure 1 | Atmospheric River System – Pacific Northwest Region In fact, reading the news headlines of the sweltering hear across the country was hard to believe with the weather conditions in the Pacific Northwest. In a recent article, titled ‘The River System – Pacific Northwest’, we detail how the ... » read more | |
| Friday Jun 10, 2022 | |
| Texas is heating up as temperatures across the Lone Star State are hitting triple digits with Dallas leading the way with highs projected to be at the 103 degree level later today and over the weekend. Houston is steady with highs in the upper 90's with a dabble of 100 degrees with plenty of humidity while the West is desert-like and the South is catching the warmer jet stream provided by Mother Nature over the next week or so. The weather is the key component to the incremental power demand we are currently seeing within the ERCOT grid while Mother Nature continues to deliver some wind and has the solar profile on the up and up which thus adding to the supply stack. The issue in ERCOT, like other ISO structures, is the simple fact that the supply is not ... » read more | |
| Thursday Jun 9, 2022 | |
| The month of June is when hydro generation typically reaches its peak each water year in the Pacific Northwest, and we’ve seen flows and production continue to rise so far over the first five days of the month as we head towards this year’s zenith. Despite its late start this water year, runoff from melt in the mountains has been proceeding quickly since mid-June. About half of the measured Snow Water Equivalent (SWE) for the water year has now come off the mountains in the Columbia basin as well as the Cascades flowing into the Westside projects, while about one third of the SWE in the Snake River Basin is still yet to melt. This has translated into a large uptick in river flows over the past couple of weeks with a resulting rise in hydro output. Flat ... » read more | |